


the ice was all between

by Ceose



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, But no idea what, Child Abuse, Gen, I feel like I should be tagging for more, I was trying to write something happy, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Not Happy, Sorry Not Sorry, this is not it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 01:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15619080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceose/pseuds/Ceose
Summary: He remembers his dad coming home and telling him about Susan, about Max.





	the ice was all between

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to write something for a new friend as a birthday present. Something nice and happy and fluffy and full of happiness. This is not it.
> 
> I'm sorry. Also I have a weird affection for commas so I'm probably super guilty of over using them. That's the real reason I'm sorry.

Billy doesn’t know how to explain it to Max, Maxine. He doesn’t really know how to explain it to anyone, but if he was going to try he guesses he would start with her. It’s not like he set out to hate her, or hurt her, or become this giant thing that made her flinch every time he cut his eyes at her, reached out a hand at her, did anything at all in her vicinity. He supposes he didn’t start out with anything at all in mind. Billy knows that he’ll never tell her anything. What’s there to say anyway? Nothing that will keep him out of trouble. Nothing that sounds like the truth. She never knew the Billy from before. The one that would curl up with his mom in her bed while she cried. Or the one that would huddle on the floor of the kitchen underneath a body only slightly larger than his own. She asks him one day about a scar on his chest and he can’t even think of a lie. He can’t think of what he told anyone about it when it happened. He just leaves. He wishes he could just leave and not come back.

He remembers his dad coming home and telling him about Susan, about Max. Remembers being told how everything was going to change, he was a ‘big brother’ now, he had responsibilities, he had to be respectful of his new mom, of his new sister. Of this whole new life that he never even wanted because his mom hadn’t even been gone long. She wasn’t even cold in the grave they lowered her into and here was this new person. This new mom. This new life. He mostly remembers the bruises. He lays in bed at night after they move to Hawkins and he runs fingers over the scars left on his chest from learning about how his family was becoming more than it was. He comes home from school and sits in the car his mom left him and thinks about what she looked like. He thinks about her a lot. Pictures her face next to his and her scars next to his and wonders, imagines, what scars he and Max will have. What scars will he and Susan have. Or will he just have all of them. Is that all he is now? A memory of a woman his dad never even really wanted around.

Is he his dad’s albatross? Is that why he’s still here? Did he die that night with his mother and now his dad is forced to carry him around as a penance? He thinks so. Maybe though his mom is the real albatross. She’s the ghost he sees in the morning before he’s fully awake. Her blonde hair a shining halo of curls in the light of a fresh dawn, her eyes crinkled from smiles she never gave to his father. Her face cracked down her cheek, a jagged seam holding her together. His father backhanded her so hard one night while Billy was curled under her that sometimes when it rains Billy flashes back to the drip-drip-drip of her blood on his face, on the tile of the kitchen where Susan could never get the stain out of the grout after she moved in. Billy went to the emergency room that night with her and she got 10 stitches, he held her hand in the back room while she lied to the doctor about what had happened. They covered the scar with makeup in her funeral. Her face beautiful and serene like Billy never saw it. They lied about her death too. Made it as beautiful and sad as her face. He sat in the back and pinched his leg to keep from crying. Finger shaped bruises down his right thigh to match the scar on the left from his father.

 

Billy spends so much time hating Susan for things she doesn’t even know about and he tries, he tries not to at first but it’s so hard. It’s harder than pretending he fell down or slipped or any of the lies he’s told to people about himself, about his mom back before she was gone. He remembers his mom telling a friend that he was to much like her; so soft, so gentle, not mean and angry like his father and that she was scared he would get eaten alive when the world realized it about him. She was right. His dad chews him up and spits him out right beside his mother on the floor of the living room, kitchen, the hallway. The entire house is nothing but his blood and pain seeped into the carpet down into the foundation. The house he grew up in, the house she died in. On her back screaming and crying and his dad standing over him so angry and terrifying and Billy in the corner crying from trying to stop it. He never did. He never could.

 

There’s so many people that come up to him in the aftermath and tell him it’s such a sad thing. Such a tragedy. Such a great loss and he can only think that it’s a loss for him, sure, but they don’t know. They can’t understand what it’s like in the house without his mom there to compare his scars to. To look at and know that she’s the same as him right underneath her clothes where the bandage is seeping blood through it again because she tripped into the door frame. She’s so clumsy and it was raining, they said. These things happen, they said. It’s god’s plan, they said. Oh well, they said. So sad about the baby too. Billy the boy that lost his mom and a sibling he never got to know. Two bodies in one grave, back into the dirt everyone comes from; safe from all they would have been through in this world that’s nothing but pain and suffering. Billy stands at the graveside and wishes he was the one in the coffin with his mom. Their blonde hair mingled together on the little coffin pillow. His face made up to cover the scars his dad gave him as a birthday present, a Christmas present. Beautiful and serene and empty of everything, like his mom was.

 

They move to Hawkins because Susan has no family to speak of, and his dad has no family to speak of, and all Billy has is the floor of a house that his mom has left bits of herself as stains he looks at when he misses her. A grave on the other side of town with a marker and a body down inside it cold and peaceful; curled around the last thing his father gave her and then punished her for. They move to Hawkins and Billy hates it. This new town where his mom is nowhere to be found, her ghost stuck in his room of a new house that she never was a part of like the old. Billy cuts his hand on the first day there and leaves a part of himself in the carpet. It’s not the same. Billy hides his memories of her in stolen places under his bed, in the closet, the trunk of his car. He thinks about her when he looks at the scars on his chest, his legs, his arms. 

He goes to class and people ask him so many questions. About his sister, his mom, his dad, his car, his life, his hair, his past, all these questions he doesn’t even really have answers for. Questions he wouldn’t want to answer even if he did have them because he’s pretty sure no one wants to hear what he’d be telling. He mostly just says, “She’s not my sister,” over and over until people get the point. Most of them do, a few of them don’t. Mainly his dad doesn’t. Mainly Max too. 

The only good thing about Hawkins is that a party is just around the corner. A drink is just around the corner and he can go home at night and not feel it so much when the noise in his head starts. The best part about Hawkins? Nothing. There’s nothing here for him and all he can think about is his mom six feet underground covered in makeup hiding the truth of his life away. He thinks about moving back more than he thinks about his school work, or his responsibilities. He lays in bed and thinks about being curled up in the ground next to her instead of a baby that never even knew it was alive before it died. He curls around his pillow at night jealous of his dead brother/sister/possibility and doesn’t cry. He thinks about moving back and living on top of her grave keeping her safe for once. He thinks about dying in this town he’s never left a mark on and aches with the knowledge that he could. He could die here and the only person that would have cared beat him to to that place in the ground.

What’s he meant to do now? He drives around town and there’s nothing, no one; everything is desolate and a wasteland. Barren of colors and covered in snow. He slides his car around curves and when he loses control for that split second it’s like he’s back at home. He’s back on the beach with his mom, the sun in his face and the smell of the ocean surrounding him. He never crashes though. The car always pulls through. Max always yells him into reality. She’s always so scared and holding on so tight to her seatbelt across her chest. He wants to tell her that he’s not the bad guy. He’s not the one that’s going to make her hurt, scar her up like Billy is. Maybe she’ll end up with a cut on her cheek to match his mom. Maybe she’ll end up at the bottom of the stairs leaking out blood. Maybe he will. Probably not though. Susan insisted on a one story house. Almost like she knew that the stairs that night weren’t as slippery as people thought. That Billy wasn’t really lucky he only broke a leg that one time. Or his arm that other. Lucky for him, Hawkins isn’t known for it’s affordable two storey homes within walking distance of the school. Billy’s so lucky.

They move and school has already started; this small town where everyone has known everyone else since birth. The same kindergarten friends in high school. Everyone’s business aired out on their front lawns for the neighbors to look at and mention at church on Sunday. Billy goes to school with a black eye and split lip once and when asked tells everyone that he’ll win the next fight. Then he tells them the other guy looks worse. Or tells them he’s just a fighter. It’s always his fault though. He always causes the fight and he never wins them. He watches people and he notices people and he picks the girls he’s going home with carefully. He picks his friends carefully. He does everything so carefully but it’s still never enough for his dad and when he comes home past curfew he leaves his marks on the new house so that it feels more like home to him. He’s just like his mother, after all. When his dad gets angry enough he tells Billy all the things he shared with his mom: her dumb face, her messy hair, how he’s not smart because of her, he’s a waste of space like she was. He yells in his face how terrible and wrong he is because he’s just like she was and Billy just wonders why he didn’t slip on the stairs too that night. Two things he hates, one rainy night, no more problems. Well, three if you count the baby that never got a name or a future. He misses school for a week over that. 

Max brings him his homework even though he never asked. She watches him from the doorway of his bedroom while he’s trying to eat soup that doesn’t require chewing and he wonders what she sees when she looks at him now. Was it worth it, he wonders? That night with the bat and Steve Harrington? He looks at Max and her face is this weird mix of things he can’t figure out while she watches him. His bed sheets have red spots on the edge from where he hit the floor. His floor has matching spots all across it. His arm aches in the cast that people will sign for him because they don’t know how much he hates it here and his face is a riot of colors that he got from his mother. Billy doesn’t know how to tell her that every time he saw her with that Sinclair boy he heard his mom in the back of his mind yelling at him because his father would not like it. Or when he got out of his car that night and there she was again, mixed up with a bunch of boys. All he could see was his mom’s face as she fell down into the abyss at the bottom of the stairs. He knows it doesn’t make it right. He knows he’s as bad as his dad is, but he doesn’t know how to fix that. He doesn’t know what parts he can cut out of himself so he’s only his mom and none of his dad. He would, he knows he would. Just like he knows the scars on his back are the only legacy his dad will ever leave him he knows that this is what he’ll always be. A scared boy watching his mom’s eyes as she takes the hits that were meant for him. So he takes the hits that were meant for Max. Even if there aren’t any yet. Even if the hits are from Max.

He goes back to school and tells everyone he fell down the stairs into the basement. He doesn’t know what Max tells people but he knows they aren’t matching stories. He knows she probably tells her little friends the truth. That Billy came home so drunk he didn’t remember to keep his thoughts in his head. How she must have heard his dad yelling and then Billy yelling and when she looked out of her door she saw Billy on the floor and heard the crack of his arm and his eyes when it happened were empty of everything. Neil was this looming shadow above him and when Billy was about to pass out he saw her there, hiding in the shadows. Her hair a mess around her shoulders, her eyes the same size his mom’s were as she floated in the air right before she hit the ground and then they were as empty as Billy feels like his are. 

What do you do with that, this new knowledge that your dog only bit you because it was hurt. That it lashed out because it was so scared you would be hurt too? That in that moment all it felt was agony washing over it and it knew that as soon as that wave passed over it, over him, it’d pull you under with it. Billy watched his mom fall down the stairs so much that he forgot how much it hurt her. He forgot how much it hurt him when he fell down there with her. His body a heavy thud that rocked through the house. He didn’t want that for Max. He didn’t want it for anybody really, he knows this isn’t how family is meant to be. Billy sits on his bed the day before he goes back to school and he hates Susan for bringing herself and Max into this. He just burns up inside with it. Billy knows he’s a broken thing his dad is obligated to keep around until he ages out but he’s not sure what that means for him.

How often can you hear that you’re no good and useless before it starts to become the truth? He sits in class looking outside the window watching the world slowly turn into more than this cold and icy place that he never wanted to know about and he thinks that maybe if his mom hadn’t died that night on the steps he’d have a little brother or sister right now. That his mom would be at home curled in bed with them trying to not let them see how much it hurt her to breathe in and out. She would tell him every day how smart he was, how good, how wonderful. Her blue eyed boy she loved so much; like she was trying to negate all the things his dad told him that were absolutes. She named him after her father and he was a good man, Billy, you’ll be a good man just like him. He tried so hard and she died anyway. He tried so hard with Max too and he didn’t die but he wishes he did. Maybe he should have let her hit him with that bat, let Harrington win that fight. He knows though that the only fight he can’t win is one with his father, that anyone else who swings at him he’s going to swing right back. He’s not going to stop swinging until it’s over. Until, apparently, Max makes him.

He watches Harrington in the halls after that though. He stays away from him like Max asked, demanded, forced him to agree with but he still watches. He knows that she dances with Sinclair at the dance she goes to, and he knows his dad doesn’t have any clue about what she’s doing yet just like he knows it’s only a matter of time before he finds out. He thinks about what she’ll look like as she’s put on the floor. He’s trying to decide if Susan will be like his mom and curl around Max like a shield taking all the hits for her. He thinks so, he hopes so. Billy knows he can’t do it; he can’t stomach the thought of getting a scar for someone that wasn’t his mom. The thought of Max’s blood on him as he curls around her like some type of useless protection makes him want to laugh. He’d never do it. There’s nothing in him for her, all of his warmth left splattered across the bottom of his back porch steps back in California. His dad moved him out to this place that’s frozen solid and expected him to be able to breath in and out and be okay with Max when he wasn’t even okay with himself. When he felt like all his important bits were stuffed in the ground and all that’s left inside him is rotting without them. 

Billy watches Max as she’s surrounded by these boys and he knows that at some point it’s going to slap her in the face, back hand her to the ground, but he said he’d stay away so he is. Some things are better learned the hard way, he guesses. It’s the only way he’s ever learned. It’s the only way he’s ever known. He watches the world slowly wake up from being frozen over and everyone around him opens up like flowers too. The warmth of the sun finally sinking back into their frozen bones over the summer but Billy stays a block of ice on the side lines. He stays frozen inside, he can feel it as it stretches over all of him until he’s this angry spitting thing his mom would never love. He thinks that’s it really. He’s never going to be loved. Not like this, not with these scars and this face and this overwhelming need to just break everything he can touch because everything he is was already shattered into fine powder by his father. What’s the use, he thinks, when the only person he ever meant something to was dead. Not in heaven, like the preacher told everyone that day, but an empty body in the dirt waiting to be able to feed the worms digging their way into her coffin. 

So Billy just stays around his dad’s neck every day like the albatross he is. He gets back up each time he’s put on the ground, no matter who puts him there. He counts down the days until he can go back to California and lay on his mother’s grave and wait to be back with her. He’ll probably be covered in scars by then. He’ll show up in vivid technicolor for her. He’ll thaw out on top of her grave in the warm California sun, digging his fingers in the dirt like roots reaching towards her hand and when he’s finally melted back into the boy she thought he was maybe then he’ll be okay. Maybe then he can stop being a show and tell version of his dad’s hidden anger and violence and he can stop lying all the time. It’s a nice dream, but it’s also just a dream. He thinks about it as he bleeds on his bed at night from his nose, his mouth, his ears; while Susan screams in the kitchen and Max cries underneath her and he knows that he’s not big enough to shield them all. He knows this is how they’ll all die. Beaten into the flooring of this house.


End file.
